The Redlands Unified School District has agreed to pay $8.5 million to four students who allege they were sexually abused by former drama teacher Joel Koonce, an attorney for the victims said Friday.

The settlement represents the latest in a string of payouts — now more than $30 million — to victims of sexual misconduct at the hands of of Redlands Unified teachers and staff members over the past seven years. All of the settlements have been reached since 2016.

Former Redlands High School teacher Joel Everett Chandler Koonce, 27, of LaVerne, has been arrested on suspicion of molesting two students from 2016 through 2018 and producing child pornography. He was fired by Redlands Unified School District last November and is the latest former teacher of the school district to be accused of sexually abusing students. The district has agreed to pay $8.5 million to four of his alleged victims. (Courtesy of Redlands Police Department)

The settlement in the Koonce case comes less than a month after the victims presented a claim to the school district without filing a formal lawsuit, said Morgan Stewart, a partner with Irvine-based Manly, Stewart & Finaldi.

“This settlement was reached in less than 30 days, which reflects the gravity of the offenses and the immense harm done to our clients,” Stewart said. “Redlands Unified recognized the harm to these students and acted honorably in settling the cases without extensive litigation to allow these students to heal from this abuse.”

The other settlements resulted from lawsuits filed by the families of students sexually abused by Redlands Unified teachers Laura Whitehurst, Kevin Patrick Kirkland and Brian Townsley as well as theater technician Daniel Bachman.

District claims its culture is changing

MaryRone Shell, a spokeswoman for the Redlands Unified, said the district has toughened its policies for reporting suspected child abuse.

“There’s been a huge cultural shift and that’s part of why Koonce is where he is now and going through what he’s going through,” she said.

Koonce, a 27-year-old La Verne resident who began teaching at Redlands High School in 2016, was arrested Nov. 8 at Ontario High School, where he had been working off-and-on as a substitute teacher.

Pleaded not guilty

Koonce has pleaded not guilty to 15 felony charges, including oral copulation with a person under the age of 18, sexual intercourse, child molestation, sexual penetration by a foreign object, distributing or showing pornography to a minor, sodomy of person under 18, and sexual exploitation of a child.

He remains in custody at the High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto.

Koonce was suspended by Redlands Unified School District in October 2017 and fired a month later.

Performance issues with Koonce surfaced in July 2017 that had nothing to do with sexual misconduct. Then, in October 2017, an employee reported Koonce for alleged misconduct involving a student, Redlands Unified officials have said.

A report was filed with child protective services, then the Redlands Police Department, and Koonce was suspended. But, at the time, the investigation could not corroborate any criminal wrongdoing.

After Koonce was fired from Redlands Unified, ongoing allegations of sexual misconduct against him continued.

In July 2018, a school district employee heard that Koonce was still engaging in inappropriate sexual conduct with students, and a second mandated report was submitted again to child protective services, prompting another investigation, according to the school district.

Redlands Unified has settled all of its previous sexual misconduct lawsuits without civil trials.

In 2016, the district agreed to pay $6 million in the case involving Whitehurst, a teacher who bore the child of one of her students and was convicted of having sex with other students.

In August, Redlands Unified agreed to pay $15.7 million to settle lawsuits against Kirkland, Townsley and Bachman.

Kirkland, a former special-education teacher and golf coach, pleaded guilty to eight felonies and three misdemeanors for sexually abusing students from June 2014 through May 2016. He was released from custody two months later after serving 13 months behind bars.

The lawsuit against Townsley, a former English teacher, alleged he sexually abused a student in 2008 and 2009, when she was 15 and 16 years old. Although the girl denied having a relationship with Townsley when interviewed by police, that was contrary to what other students told authorities.

Townsley admitted to police of being romantically involved with the girl, saying he believed they had a “future together.” However, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute Townsley, citing insufficient evidence.

Stewart also sued Redlands Unified on behalf of a former student who alleged she was sexually abused by Bachman, a former Redlands High School theater technical director, from 2011 to 2013. Bachman told police he and the girl had been dating about a year before they had sex but the District Attorney’s Office did not charge him either, citing insufficient evidence.

The latest settlement follows an investigation spanning more than a year by the Southern California News Group into allegations that Redlands Unified officials repeatedly failed to properly report teachers accused of sexually abusing or having inappropriate relationships with students.

A review of more than 2,000 pages of police reports, affidavits and depositions, along with more than 100 hours of recordings, also revealed that the school district obstructed the Whitehurst criminal investigation, and that Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Sabine Robertson-Phillips might have destroyed evidence.

District has ‘a long way to go’

Although Stewart is pleased the Koonce case was resolved quickly, he has repeatedly called for state and federal officials to independently investigate Redlands Unified’s handling of sex abuse cases.

“The administration still has a long way to go, particularly in resolving the culture that allowed these abuses to occur,” he said. “They admittedly won’t get rid of administrators who are culpable. Until they clean house, I think they are going to have same issues they always have.”

Scott Schwebke is an investigative reporter for the Register and the Southern California News Group. A native of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., he was previously a breaking news and multimedia reporter for the Ogden, Utah, Standard-Examiner. Scott has also worked at newspapers in Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia. A graduate of Brigham Young University, Scott is the Register's 2014 Beat Reporter of the Year. He has won more than two dozen journalism awards including the N.C. Associated Press News Council’s O. Henry Award for a lengthy narrative on the brutal home invasion slaying of a nurse and a Katie Award from the Dallas Press Club for a feature story on a UFO investigator. Scott has covered everything from methamphetamine trafficking cops to hurricanes and has accompanied police on undercover drug buys. He also provided an award winning, eyewitness account of the execution of a North Carolina death row inmate and obtained an exclusive interview with the ringleader of a brazen escape from the Orange County Jail involving three maximum security inmates. Scott was also part of the Register’s investigative team that produced the year-long, award winning Rehab Riviera series, examining problems in Southern California’s drug rehabilitation industry. Having spent two years living in England including Liverpool, he is an avid Beatles fan and memorabilia collector. He and his wife, Lisa, reside in Anaheim.

Joe Nelson is an award-winning investigative reporter who has worked for The Sun since November 1999. He started as a crime reporter and went on to cover a variety of beats including courts and the cities of Colton, Highland and Grand Terrace. He has covered San Bernardino County since 2009. Nelson is a graduate of California State University Fullerton. In 2014, he completed a fellowship at Loyola Law School's Journalist Law School program.